Sunday, 31 July 2011

Toward a government of men...

"Discretionary” "Justice” Dept

In response to last weekend’s Wall Street Journal article As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Ensnared, a law professor writes:

...You suggest that it is "increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side” of a "balloon[ing]” body of federal criminal law. What you fail to discuss is the prosecutorial discretion imbedded in our criminal justice system. Not every violation of criminal law brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities results in an indictment... I suspect that in each of the cases [cited in the article] the prosecutors had reasons beyond the surface elements of the crimes... for commencing the particular prosecution. I also suspect that in each of their jurisdictions many more instances of similar conduct were resolved civilly or not pursued at all.

Prof. Cassidy writes as if the "many more instances” being "not pursued” is a good thing. He’s wrong. Every violation of the law "brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities” that does not lead to prosecution takes us one step closer to a "government of men, not laws,” in which there will be one law for the elite and connected, and another law for the targeted (and the rest of us). The only barrier: The good behaviour of men who, after all, are not only lawyers but also politicians.

That Cassidy sees the question of "whether Congress has criminalized innocent behaviour” as less important than whether prosecutorial discretion is being "properly” exercised may stem from confidence that a J.D. (Harvard) "Masonic handshake” will protect him from the "ballooning law + prosecutorial malice” mousetraps that lie in wait for the rest of us. But circumstances have a way of changing; just ask Martha Stewart.

Saturday, 30 July 2011

There is much more room for growth in non-traded services than people think. Last spring Matt Yglesias had an important post that offered a glimpse of the promised land.

In "The Yoga Instructor Economy” Yglesias pointed out that there will be a rising demand for personal services that can’t be outsourced. Dinners in fancy restaurants are more labor-intensive than burgers at McDonald’s. Yglesias continues:

Artisanal cheese is more labor-intensive to produce than industrial cheese. More people will hire interior designers and people will get their kitchens redone more often. There will be more personal shoppers and more policemen. People will get fancier haircuts.

That makes it sound like the new economy will be all about frills, but in reality much more serious forces are at work. Three in particular need to be taken into account: We are developing a surplus of both educated and uneducated labor, making workers relatively cheap; the drastic decline in the prices of computing power and bandwidth has changed our relationship to the world of information; the rise of the two-career family and the growing demands of the professional workplace have created a substantial group of families who are, comparatively speaking, money rich and time poor.
...
Value added intermediation is the rationale for a whole range of services that entrepreneurs will be building in coming years. You might have a family tech agent that for some reasonable fee reviews and manages your communications life: helping you select the right phone package for your family’s patterns and needs, advising you about major electronic purchases, making sure you get the most out of your equipment and software, serving as your tech back up and troubleshooting. When something goes wrong you don’t call New Delhi; you call the people down the street.

I’m not sure that Matt Yglesias is the person whose ideas I’d want to bet my future on, and this strikes me as ridiculous for several reasons.

The key assumption (which Mead expands upon) is that our massive decline of manufacturing and the accelerating outsourcing of white collar jobs will still leave behind a sufficient population of "money rich and time poor” "professionals”[1] to support a projected horde of personal assistants, financial advisors. party planners, and other "intermediators.” And not only support them, but support them at a close-to-"professional”-level income, so they themselves will find it not only affordable but also desirable to employ other "intermediators.” (Sort of everyone taking in each other’s laundry, right?)

And Mead goes on to assume a population of well-educated workers who are unwilling, unable, or uninterested in becoming part of the "professions,” and will therefore be ready and eager to work as "intermediators.” But in the quote above, Mead stumbles over the problem: The current fire sale on otherwise-unemployable educated people cannot last. Because "intermediators” gotta work cheap (otherwise the "professionals” won’t be able to hire enough of them to support everybody), but if they’re that cheap, how do they pay for their schooling?[2] Wow, dilemma!

And just how many "personal trainers,” "private college counselors,” or "relocation advisors” will some barista be able to afford, anyway?

[1] Just what these professionals will do to earn their keep is unclear. I assume that Mead has in mind doctors, lawyers, politicians, corporate executives, top bureaucrats, academics (and other members of the chattering class), and criminals.

Thursday, 28 July 2011

We just spent $9 Trillion we didn’t have, but we will make a $1.1 Trillion cut – over ten years. Which is to say we will cut $100 Billion a year, having spent $9 Trillion. The deficit will continue to grow... Inspectors in the Department of Agriculture will continue to get "cost of living” raises and step increases in their civil service ratings. Department of Education SWAT teams will get their raises including full health and pensions... The EPA will continue to impose regulations, the courts will continue to accept lawsuits to harass anyone who intends to open a mine, drill an oil well, or create a business.

The only remedy will be to raise taxes. We must have shared sacrifices so that the Washington elites can go about business as usual...

Doomed: Even The Vaunted Boehner Plan Cuts Only One Billion in 2012 —(post by Ace)

Over 10 years, it cuts, it is supposed, $1.1 trillion dollars.

But almost all of those cuts come in the tenth year.
...
The CBO scores the ten year deficit reduction as $851 billion, not $1.1 trillion.
...
Isn't that less than the $2 billion in 2012 that Biden and the Democrats proposed?

House GOP revolts against Boehner plan
by Stephen Dynan and Sean Lengell

House Republicans do not have enough support to pass their debt-ceiling increase plan on their own, a top conservative said Tuesday as his party’s leaders tried to cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to put the bill over the top.

"There are not 218 Republicans in support of this plan,” Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who heads the powerful conservative caucus in the House, told reporters Tuesday morning.

If Mr. Jordan is right, that would mean Speaker John A. Boehner would have to rely on Democrats to pass [his] $1.2 trillion spending cuts plan — support Democrats’ top vote-counter said he’ll be hard-pressed to gain. Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer said "very few” Democrats will vote for the Boehner plan, though he acknowledged there could be some.

...What was truly awful was the projected $1 billion in deficit reduction from discretionary spending next year. Why's that important? Well, it's the only year that counts. The rest, the so called "out years" are promises and projects this Congress can't commit to delivering...
...
How ridiculously small is that number? The Ryan Budget the House passed earlier this year would cut the deficit by $30 billion next year. So the Boehner Plan represents a surrender on what already got passed the House. Way to negotiate against yourself.

As you know, I'm a Freemason. We have a rule in the Fraternity that no Grand Lodge sitting in annual convocation can bind future Grand Lodges to do anything that isn't already covered in our Code (constitution, bylaws, and general regulations). So when we implement, say, a five-year study program to determine whether to make a wide-ranging constitutional or bylaws change, that five-year program can be killed the very next year by a simple majority vote against continuing it. As a result, it is very difficult for us to construct workable multi-year programs -- particularly ones that involve spending money -- because of the no-binding rule.

Along these lines, I have long wondered how a sitting Congress can commit future Congresses to do its will. The answer, of course, is that it can't. Anything that affects spending, revenues, or the debt past the next election is little more than self-serving pandering, because the fact is, a sitting Congress's authority dies at the end of its two years -- and all bets are then off.

If the general public ever wakes up and realizes that a massive Congressional 10-year spending cuts package is actually merely a 1 or 2 year package of minimal cuts coupled with 8 to 9 years of baseless lies and prevarications, then maybe they'll start throwing the lying bastards out. But I'm not sanguine about the prospects of that.

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Those on the right are Enlightenment thinkers, and assume that everyone shares certain assumptions about debate and logic. But the left denies the fundamental tenet of the Enlightenment – that there is an objective reality we can measure things against.

Since the other side is debating by completely different rules and assumptions, it’s literally impossible to come to agreement with them. Even if you think you did, they reserve the right to redefine terms as necessary to further their objectives.

When they do these things, it’s important to understand that they don’t believe that they are lying. Since their concept of truth is different from those on the right, their concepts of dishonesty and deception are different too.

Includes "four rules of post-modern rhetoric.” RTWT, it explains a lot.

Ah...Brigid minds me of the time Mom was making a chocolate pie but couldn't find the double-boiler to melt the chocolate in. So she tried two saucepans instead. Unfortunately they were kind of a close fit. And she wasn't paying attention when the water boiled in the lower one. Can you say "steam explosion"?

Chocolate everywhere.

Including behind the furnace (which was in a louvered-door closet in the kitchen) when we took it out years later.

We still laugh about it, Mom included. But it sure wasn't funny at the time.

Sunday, 24 July 2011

The BBC is planning to cut costs by broadcasting more repeats, possibly scrapping Formula 1 and bringing back the test card overnight

Bosses will meet the corporation’s governing body today to explain how to save £1.3billion over four years.
...
The cutbacks, drawn up after a six-year licence fee freeze, are likely to see BBC1 and BBC2 cease broadcasting at 1am. This has led to suggestions that it could see the return of the test card which for years was used when the BBC was off air.

Unnecessary in this era of automated broadcast operations, and probably yielding minimal actual savings (assuming they plan to keep their transmitters operating overnight, as they did in the past). But producing maximum complaints, which was the idea all along, wunnit?

Whereas one Malcolm Turnbull, Member of Parliament for Goldman Sachs, self-appointed leader of the Absolute Bankers’ Get-Rich-Quick, Gimme-the-Money, Subsidy-Junkies’, Profiteers’-of-Doom and Rent-Seekers’ Vested-Interest Coalition Against Hard-Working Taxpayers, has this day demonstrated wilful but indubitably profitable ignorance of elementary science by declaring that since all relevant matters of climatology are settled no one should pay any heed to a mere Peer of the Realm who dares to question the imagined (and imaginary) scientific "consensus” to the effect that unless the economies of the West are laid waste and destroyed we are all doomed;